September

 

 I'm a little surprised to find myself blogging at Dewena's Window again but life has a little something missing without it and September 1st seemed a good time to try. Maybe I can hit publish by midnight tonight even though it's been around Robin Hood's barn to pull it off after my Mac Pro decided to punish me for ignoring it all summer. 

Back in May I made like a flying squirrel who lost her footing and glided to the ground a tad bit harder than intended, which was not at all. Majorly bruised from broken toes to not broken shoulder, my knee taking the brunt of it, I spent three months visiting my favorite physical therapist. Thank you, Patrick! 

But late spring and summer compensations were plentiful, as when our firstborn brought me enough beautiful yellow roses for the whole house.

And even trimmed and arranged them for me!

Our lives have been quiet here this summer but many joys are constant. There's always the fun of cookbooks and cooking.

I'm so sorry for poor picture quality! Not only do I have shaky hands and worsening eyesight but BeFunky decided to make changes too that I can't figure out. 

Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Citrus and Fennel (seed) lured me into making them even though I felt a little guilty because I usually only make them when a certain daughter-in-law comes to town.

I think there's a recipe for this in my Judith Huxley label but I'll never hit publish on this post by midnight if I try to find it and link it. After the olives chill in fridge for a week or two I make Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with crushed olives. I shouldn't have skipped crushing the olives this time but it was still delicious.

There have been meals to cook and pretty tables to set and I kept taking pictures of them even though I wasn't blogging. And there have been good books to read before bed and books to listen to on my free library app while I wash dishes and fold laundry. 

Right now it's Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers, an old favorite about American heiresses hunting for husbands among the financially strapped British aristocracy.

 Quite a different recent one was Playin' Possum.

It's about the Possum himself, country music star George Jones. The early chapters were frankly depressing due to his cocaine addiction and domestic violence, the book written by Nancy Jones, his fourth and final wife. If I had been actually sitting down reading the book I would have returned it to the library early but listening to it while I worked I kept on listening and was glad I did because it was good to know George and Nancy were happy in his later years.

You see, we old timers here in Nashville love George Jones who was a mighty sweet guy when he was sober. And that voice still gets to me and I agree with writer Julia Reed that George's "He Stopped Loving Her Today" is the "Best Country music song ever made."

I miss George Jones and I miss Julia Reed.

And now that I'm 81 and no longer wish away my least favorite month, August, I'll probably even miss the summer of 2024.

Still, I am more than delighted to welcome September and the hope of cooler temperatures. There's just something promising about September, isn't there? If I could remember how to embed, is that the word for it, videos from YouTube here I would end with a link to Walter Huston singing "The September Song." 

Do you know Walter Huston, Canadian actor of silent films and the talkies? Father to director John Huston, grandfather to Angelica Huston and Danny Huston? And I think there's an uncle somewhere in the mix.

"The September Song" that we love sung by so many wonderful singers was actually written for Walter Huston and he sang it in a play on Broadway and if you go to the trouble to find it on YouTube these September days you might see, as I did that he can tear your heart out with his poignant interpretation. 

I recently fell down the Walter Huston rabbit hole after watching a 1950 movie called September Affair with Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotton. With dresses by Edith Head! And Walter Huston sings The Song! 

Sorry about the length of all this. Rabbit holes are my favorite pasttime now in my 80s and I give myself permission to indulge but I do feel sorry for any reader here. 

 A long long time from May to September,

September. November.

These few precious days I'll spend with you!

      And I'm mush. Every single time.

Furs Again, Princess Marina of Greece, Mama in Greece

On November 3, 2016, I wrote a post here called "The Shorter the Sleeves, the Longer the Gloves," and had a photo of myself wearing my mother's silver mink stole on my honeymoon many decades ago. 

When I found the photograph above, another one RH took of me on our honeymoon, it reminded me that I had intended to do a followup discussion of furs. With the move back to Tennessee not long after that it never got written.

What better time for it than now during the bitterly cold weather across much of the U.S. and Canada?

In comments at the old post, here, many friends wrote of still wearing fur coats or jackets in cold weather, especially ones from consignment stores even if they might not buy new ones now. 

One woman even wrote that she had once lived in the Yukon and wore fur, where I would guess it makes not just perfect sense to wear them but good plain horse sense also. I imagine there may have been many women in the Chicago area who wore theirs this week, if they ventured outside. 

Deborah of The Beautiful Matters wrote that she had some fur collars she loves found at consignment stores and I thought of her when I spotted this one at a local antique mall after Christmas that was 50% off and cost me a big $10.

I could not resist that bargain and it feels so soft and warm around my neck and reminds me of the mouton fur collars my girlfriends and I wore in high school with sweater sets and form-fitting wool skirts with kick-pleats. We really dressed up for school back then.

I don't know if I'll ever get up my nerve to wear it anywhere but if I do I think I'll buy a piece of soft lining satin to line it with. There's even a little hook and eye at the neckline that is broken so I need to replace that.

Before you ask where is a picture of me wearing it or my mother's mink stole now, here it is...

                                     Ha!

And that's all you're going to see of me in it for now because a jillion attempted selfies did nothing but show how frizzy my freshly shampooed hair was and that I badly needed to visit a professional makeup artist first.

I splurged on a good haircut in downtown Nashville a couple of weeks ago so I will show you pictures the stylist took of me afterwards, even though lipstick was all I'd taken time for that day.

Why can't I blow dry my hair that smoothly? I've decided that RH needs to go to hair salon school so he can do it every morning for me. And learn to be a makeup artist. Don't you think he should do that?

Then I could wear my mother's 60-year-old mink stole almost as elegantly as Princess Marina of Greece did in the picture below in 1934 in Vogue magazine when she was about to be married to H. R. H. Prince George of England.

Her fur is an ermine cape from Molyneux, who also designed her wedding gown. Isn't it gorgeous?

I treasure the old Vogue magazines in my collection and can spend hours reading every single word in them, even the advertisements, and swooning over the beautiful clothes and furs. 

After reading the article about the princess, I talked to Greek-Canadian girlfriend Poppy about her and she told me lots of interesting things about this princess of Greece and Denmark who after her marriage was a beloved member of the British Royal Family until she died in 1963. (Poppy, I could not find the notes I took that day and if you happen to read this, please add in what you remember!)

I wish so much that I had a photo of my mother wearing her mink stole but my sisters and I couldn't find a single one of her in it for this post. We still remember how exciting it was when our father surprised Mama with it and how perfectly elegant she looked in it, the silver fur lovely with her hair that was dark as a raven's breast.

Another surprise came to Mama much later in life when her sister invited her on a Mediterranean cruise. On it she had the joy of visiting Greece herself. I have a copy of her itinerary and read it again today.

She arrived in Athens in October of 1997 aboard the Orient Lines' the Ocean Majesty, which I understand is now operated by a German cruise line. 

She and her sister Marty toured Athens for two days and then went back to the ship for ports of call at Delos and Mykonos and then on to Santorini. They also traveled to Rhodes and to Kusadasi and then on to Istanbul.

Here is a photo of her at Santorini...

I'm so grateful that my dear mother, the first Dewena, who I was named for, was given the opportunity for this trip of a lifetime by her sister. What a great time they had with lots of stories to tell us!

My mother had four sisters and they were all very close, seeing each other as often as they could. That's when the fun really happened. Oh, those sister parties at Myrtle Beach! Only Mama, the oldest of the five girls, and June, the baby sister, are are here with us now, the three middle girls now in their heavenly home. 

Here is Mama sitting next to her mother, with three of her four sisters, celebrating my grandmother's birthday. 

I've thought a lot about these beautiful women while writing this post. I grew up in the elegant age of the 1940s, 1950s and early 60s and remember how beautiful my mother and aunts were, dressed up in their finest. 

Whatever our view of wearing fur is now, we all must admit that the early part of the 20th century was certainly a glamorous age, wasn't it?

I never could see why women could be seduced with jewels, but, oh, I'm sorry for those who are tempted too far by furs! I should like to be swathed in them.

Agnes Sligh Turnbull (1941)

I don't care what they say: I love fur; I read National Enquirer; I rarely recycle; I think Prince Charles and Camilla deserve to be happy.

Julia Reed in an interview on

wowowow.com

MFK Fisher's Gazpacho Salad

If it's still in the 90s in the daytime and 70s at night, it's still Summer and it's hot, I don't care how many Autumn pictures I see on Pinterest.

It's still aspic weather in the South and will be in my house as long as the hot weather lasts, although I've been known to serve tomato aspic on Christmas Eve.

I did one post on it at my other blog back in June but MFK Fisher helped me take my recipe to a whole new level when I made her Gazpacho Salad this week. 

It turns out that hers was just a fancier name for it and I guess that gazpacho salad does sound more gourmet than tomato aspic.

The recipe for the basic tomato aspic is back on my blog post here but I updated it with Fisher's recipe in Joan Reardon's delightful book on her called M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans.

I added 1 cup of beef consommé, 1 red sweet bell pepper diced, 1 sweet red onion, chopped, and 1 cucumber peeled and diced. And I added a couple of chopped jalapeños from my garden. All of these chopped vegetables were so good in the salad!

And I added a cup of chili sauce, something I saw somewhere, can't remember where, and thought would be good and was it ever! Extra spiciness!

I didn't make her dressing of 1 clove garlic mashed into 1/2 cup olive oil with salt and pepper because we love my own dressing of mayo with a little olive oil, lemon juice and snipped basil so much.

I know from emails on my other post that very few of you like aspics. But I stand with Julia Reed (I love her column in Garden & Gun) when she wrote in her cookbook Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialties that we congeal everything in the South. 

Her mother once "had a four-day house party during which she served an almost exclusively gelatin-based menu...crabmeat mousse, a strawberry mousse, two kinds of tomato aspic, and a charlotte russe."

I would have been a happy member of that house party! 

Now I can just bet that no one is going to try the Gazpacho Salad recipe and I'll put money on not one of you trying the entree of our meal. But you might just like my dessert recipe, so stay with me, please.

Are you asking what in tarnation is that ugly entree? I never said I was a food stylist but believe it or not this was good.

On a slice of pumpernickel for each of us I spread avocado mashed with a little lemon juice, next I put on some good wild caught canned sardines, next went thin slices of cucumber with black pepper and a squirt of lemon juice and then I topped it off with jalapeño slices. 

And there was our dinner. I know that Poppy loves sardines, although hers are fresh caught ones from Crete. Anyone else out there like these protein packed little fish that have the same omega 3 that salmon does?

Enough of that, let's have dessert! What about pecan pie? 

That purple is just a sprig of Joe Pye Weed hanging over the pie from a vase on the table. 

Have you ever tried an Authentic Pecan Pie? One without nasty corn syrup in it? 

I've had this recipe for years and the clipping said it was by a Carolina cook. "And don't ever use corn syrup! That ruins the consistency. Authentic pecan pie is jelly-like, translucent with sparkle. Just start with a pound of brown sugar, then add three eggs, about two eggshells of milk, a big splash of vanilla, some salt, and a lot of pecans."

I baked it at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Easiest pecan pie ever and you wouldn't believe the good flavor. I have several recipes for pecan pie but RH says this is his favorite. I only had a small piece of the pie and left the rest for RH, and he took a slice to Zack.

Besides, my favorite dessert is another serving of aspic. And I'll take fish and seafood any day for my protein rather than poultry or beef or pork. 

Maybe, just maybe, I've been influenced by MFK Fisher's thoughts in Serve It Forth.

For many old people, eating is the only pleasure left...And between gobbling down an indistinguishable mess of heavy meat and bread, or savouring a delicate broiled trout or an aspic full of subtle vegetable flavours, how few of us would choose the distressful insomnia that follows the first for the light easy rest of the second?

Okay, I really don't think of myself as old yet but I'm already finding that I sleep better after a supper of vegetable stuffed aspic and fish or seafood than red meat. Wild caught Alaskan salmon is usually my choice but I think that Rainbow or brook trout is my very favorite fish and I have an excellent recipe from Judith Jones for that. 

I wonder if RH would agree to trout and pecan pie for Thanksgiving Dinner? 

Oh, and thank you so much for ideas for using the copper gutter in the garden! I think that RH is now thinking about making it into a water fountain if he can find a pretty basin for the water to fall into.